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He's quite an interesting guy who makes some good points. I would like to hear more of what he has to say.

Thank you for sharing this. I also found this from the FSF:

http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do

Here's a list of Linux distro's recommended by GNU.org.

http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html

The OS on his laptop is also 100% free, and he berates anything which has even a tiny amount of binary blobs in it.

http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

The guy seems to be rather arrogant, but I think people prefer to see past that. He doesn't do much (if any) dev work these days, but is quite proactive in the freedom movement.

Whoever titled this next video was a lazy ass. Subjects covered:
* Surveillance by social networks and proprietary software
* The free software movement and human rights
* The dangers of software patents



I think anyone who speaks out about anything has to have a certain amount of arrogance otherwise they would back down.

I'd recommend listening to this while you're doing something else, it's quite lengthy but well worth a listen.

Aww they cut out the questions...

I just got burned by proprietary software. I bought a math study guide that comes with a CD which is encrypted and cannot be read natively in GNU/Linux. I could download a "descrambler" but this would be illegal in the UK. Think about that, it is illegal for me to access the information I legitimately paid for.
There was no indication whatsoever that the CD would only run on Windows. The only hint is that on the back of the book it says the CD includes Powerpoint presentations, but there was no mention of that on the website I bought it from.

This is insane, why should I be forced to use Microsoft Windows to access the data I paid for?

I'm going to admit that I have watched the videos but is he advocating that ALL software should be free and open source or that there should be a mix?

I don't really see what's so wrong with proprietary software. I use a mix a free, open source software and proprietary software.

I do realise that the intellectual property laws, whether patents, copyright, trade marks, etc, are being abused by some companies but to me this doesn't make the whole system wrong.

@Obese
I can understand your frustration but it depends what's on the CD. Is it just data (that could have been put in a pdf, for example) or is it more interactive? Also, if you're in the UK, this should be covered by the distance selling rules so you should be able to get your money back. I might have missed the point here, and that you just want thing's to be more happy*, but maybe it's better to be pragmatic rather than idealist.

Also, the best maths book if Engineering Mathematics by KA Stroud. But I suppose that depends on what you're after.

*couldn't think of a better word (it's late and I can't sleep) but I'm hoping you understand.

Of course! And the first thing shat should be open and free - antivirus software! All should see how it is working. And all updates will be free, based on donate.

I interpret Stallman's philosophy as, "Knowledge is not property."
He is against any form of proprietary software. He is certainly a purist, and maybe too idealistic, he dislikes Wine because it allows the very software onto GNU/Linux that he was trying to get away from. I think Wine is necessary to cut people's dependence on Windows. If someone can install a program that was made for Windows on GNU/L too then surely that's a good thing? He wants GNU/L to be a pristine environment where everything is free and shared, but that's not going to happen overnight, there is a transitional period where people need to be eased out of their dependency on proprietary software; and Wine provides that opportunity.


Imagine what the world would be like if science was conducted in the same manner. What if you had to buy a license to use trigonometry or calculus? That's close to the position I'm in now because I cannot access my maths CD-ROM without a Windows license. If the book was digital I wouldn't be able to access it at all.

The CD contains some supplementary questions and PowerPoint© presentations that go through the step-by-step algorithms. I don't know exactly what the files are but it sounds like they are all MSOffice formats, which are compatible with LibreOffice.

uugh - to be honest... Donation is not a safe donation, and would essentially mean that nobody can anylonger make it a buisness - imagine yourself... Your income goes from a safe xxxxx/month to, anywhere from a couple hundred dollars to a couple thousand.

I mean, antivirus is a CORE part of our computers, so I do agree that it would be nice for some sort of better system, but... Donations really isnt it.

I never have understood any kind of anti proprietary software philosophy. Developers have to work to develop software, so shouldn't they be paid if they choose so? And no, donations don't make that cut...

That's the paradox of the situation. There needs to be a completely new system for trading information, treating it like a physical product harms both developers and consumers because it is an untenable façade.


That's not the problem. Nobody has a problem with people earning a living by employing a skill. The issue is that proprietary software is restricted in ways that no other product is, you cannot study the code to learn from it, you cannot use it how you wish, you cannot modify it to act as you require, you cannot share it with others.

I totally understand people being against free software if their earn their living from proprietary software, but that doesn't change the fact that it is unethical and limits access to knowledge, with far reaching consequences.

I flatly do not agree.

That information is not a physical item?

Well - the papers I leave to the state every week to get money is pure - psysical - information, but that's not what I don't agree with.

What I don't agree with is the "We should handle virtual stuff completly different to our psysical stuff" I simply do not see the difference. But alright - How is it going to be treated then? and also - WHY should it be treated differently?
Why does it "hurt the consumers AND the developers"?

Yay, I have that. Anyone have any suggestions for a good game/graphics based math book? It must be available in physical form and deal with matrices, quaternions etc

On topic. trigonometry might be free but if someone takes the time to write a book and present it in a clever way that makes it easy to understand then why should they not sell that book, and what difference does is make if it's an e-book?

This guy is simply a socialist I think? I don't have anything against that, but these ideas don't fit with our current capitalist system. Why rule out a whole section of society from being allowed to earn a living, seems unfair.

I will watch the video now

Data cannot be treated like a physical item because it is independent of any physical medium and can be copied by anyone with a computer.
The current system hurts users because it restricts their freedoms, and it hurts developers because it is incredibly difficult to restrict the distribution of data, for the above reasons. Software piracy costs developers major losses, and so they are forced to try to restrict the distribution of their software through implementing DRM, which can always be compromised.

I don't know enough about economics or software development to give a solution to this problem, but maybe I can throw out a few ideas, I'd like to hear other ideas too.

* Government funded development of free software is certainly viable.
* A fund could be set up to reward developers who publish free software independently.
* Intellectual property rights could expire after a set period.


Thanks for the recommendation.

yippie, because everyone loves being restricted! Not to mention censured!


What fund? From whom?


that i agree with




Iam sure DRM costs them more to make, than it prevents in piracy. Also - Developers are a MAJOR gripe in this - Developers nowadays DOES NOT make Demos for us to try, they make horrible user hindering DRM - which believe it or not, makes people pirate - and they have a generarily despiciable attitude towards this.

>MUH FREEDUMBS


historically, skills have made people money because that skill was used to produce something of value which was sold for money. if you take the product of people's labor and make it completely free, then you have erased pretty much the only way production can create income. and demanding that everything be open-source and re-usable by everyone else is in principle no different than demanding that all patents be useless. "knowledge should be free!" like the knowledge of how to build any piece of technology as well, right? maybe not the materials used in doing so, but how it's done. now you have inventors coming up with great inventions, and never collecting an income from it, because manufacturers overseas have taken the freely available design and can produce so many more of them that they overwhelm the market at low production costs that push you out of your own invention's market. congratulations.


right, because the government just "has money" all the time to give people. you apparently fail to realize that all the money given to the developers will be taxed out of the taxpayer's pocket, reducing the average citizen's paycheck just that much more, to fund countless numbers of software developments that the taxpayer will probably never use. things like antivirus, yeah probably, but when you want all software to be free and open-source, that means every single program that comes out that the average taxpayer doesn't use is going to be payed for by the taxpayer. and then on the developer's side, as quick pointed out, the government will restrict the liberties of developers in regards to censorship etc. and because they hold the money, they become the dictators in regards to what people will have the funds to create and what they won't.

You're kidding, right?

Nobody's saying you can't copyright the art, music, name, dialog (if any), and so on.

We're just talking about open source software

My experience of patents and intellectual property comes from my job as a design engineer. Two companies I've worked for have accidentally infringed patents. One was for a lifting roof for a semi-trailer and the other for a way to stop intercooler* tubes collapsing during manufacturing. Both of these patents are hardly world changing inventions, and from the patents I've read very few are, but I just see it as part of the game, so to speak, and the trick is to understand the claims of the patent to find ways around it.

Patents are very powerful because the owner does not have to prove that someone has copied the idea (unlike with copyright), the fact that the idea has been copied (even accidentally) is enough to sue for infringement. However, a patent can not be granted if the there is prior art. Prior art being the technical term for the idea already being in the public domain. So what creator of free software need to is put their stuff out there as soon as they can but they need to understand how patents work. The idea itself is not enough to block a patent being issued (or to defeat a law suit) because the application of the idea is also important. For instance, I was told a story of some having a patent on a water tower (bear with me) but the claims of the patent were not to do with the design but to do with the manner of assembly. So by simply assembling the water in a different manner the patent was by-passed. What this means, is that if you create a bit of software you have to pretty much describe all the applications it can be used in and all the different ways of achieving the same result (by application I mean sense of its uses not in the sense of apps).

The other important part of the patent is that there is a period (I think it's a year maybe more) where the patent application can be challenged. Patent offices may not have any real experience of the patent they are dealing with so it is up to others to look through patents that being are applied for and, where appropriate, to challenge the application. I believe there is also something in the system that if an invention is so fundamental then it must be licensed to anyone for a reasonable cost (reasonable cost being one of those legal terms that could mean millions of pounds / euros / dollars).

Generally, intellectual property does have a time limit. I believe patents only last for twenty years. Copyright (the most useless form of intellectual property) is time after the originator's death (I don't know how that works when a company owns the copyright). Trade and shape marks I believe last for the life time of the company (basically forever)**.

At the end of all of that, I would like to state that I'm not a patent lawyer and have only a slim grasp of the process. But I have read a lot of the damnable things and they make Shakespeare read like a Mr Man book.

When people talk about the value of information, and let's include all digital media, there does seem to be confusion as to what we're actually buying. This is exacerbated by the general rule that things have value because they are scarce or are difficult manufacture. Good digital media is certainly difficult to create but once it's created it is incredibly easy to make more copies so it's not scarce. So what are we paying for? What do we actually own? Where does the value come from? I see the value and the cost in terms of someone's time. We're paying for the time it has taken for the creation of the information or media.

Going back to Obese's maths book and the free availability of basic knowledge, I very much doubt that the publishers of the book are part of some conspiracy to help microsoft dominate the world. It's more that Windows is a popular operating system so they probably didn't think it would be a problem. These days, with the existence of IOS and Android, there is more of an awareness of different operating systems so hopefully things like this will not happen so often.



* For those who don't know, an intercooler is used in turbo / super charged engines to cool the compressed air before it goes into the cylinder.

** Trivia: the patent for Lego has run out which is why there are now lots of "lego" style building block systems (and probably explains the existence of Star Wars Lego). Lego applied for a shape mark on the shape of their basic 2x8 brick in order to prevent other people from making similar bricks but were turned down because of their previous patent.

Bonus trivia: Dyson (the vacuum cleaner guy) is known for his function over form mantra. However, a chinese company started making replacement Dyson vacuum cleaner handles that looked identical to the official ones. The chinese company was successfully sued not for patent infringement but for infringing design rights. Design rights are to do with the aesthetics of a product not its function. In this case, it was shown that a lot of the moulded in ribs in the handle are not functionally necessary. They do not make the handle more rigid, they are purely aesthetic. Apparently James Dyson likes ribs, whether function or not there is no such thing as too many ribs, and this design practice is unofficial known at Dyson as RTF: "ribbed to ****".

Richard Stallman
An amazing guy who, over time, has been proven correct (from my perspective). I initially thought he was just some hippy living in the past. I've since retracted these views. It's not just his software views that matter, it's his political views too. To sum up all of his views on different things in a word: "Freedom."

Free Software Foundation
A great foundation. All of my personal projects use the GNU GPL version 3. I wish the Linux kernel would upgrade to GPL v3 but Linus is very against this. I find Linus to be arrogant but that's a separate matter. He's being practical. If anyone wants to know more about what I'm referring to, look at the history of Android and the Linux kernel around the time the GPL version 3 came out.

Free Software
If I didn't work on proprietary software I would be exclusively using free software and it would work great. I would even abandon playing games like Minecraft which (I find to be fun, but also) are proprietary. I'd instead work on my own.

Open Hardware
It would be nice if hardware manufacturers told us how to communicate with their hardware. I'd even write drivers if I had some damn specs. Unfortunately, most of them don't. NVIDIA is especially bad about this. At least AMD/ATI (now) and Intel give programming specs for their GPUs. Intel does a much better job than AMD/ATI does.

If I were in a position to acquire new parts I would review each part to make sure at least Linux has support for them. Lately I've preferred FreeBSD for its jailing subsystem and the cleanliness of its source base. I've always been fond of NetBSD too. And OpenBSD seems like a logical choice if you're really concerned about security. I'd prefer OpenBSD if I were a whistleblower or something. But I'm also not very familiar with its kernel, so that's a "soft choice" so to speak. Anyway, if the hardware was known to work with those, I'd be even more inclined to get it.

Now that I think about it, I'd probably look around to see if they give hardware programming specs anywhere.

I wouldn't go so far as to preventing my computer from possibly being able to run Windows, but if it couldn't that would be a plus. (Viruses written for the most common architectures--x86, and x86-64--wouldn't possibly be able to affect me no matter what. The only systems that run Windows are x86/x86-64 and ARM based these days. Windows has not yet been written for MIPS as far as I know. As a side note, I've always liked the MIPS architecture. It makes more sense.)

Lisp/Scheme
These look rather elegant. I am starting to prefer these but mostly because of curiosity. It's more practical, currently, for me to continue using C (and C++ (and those are separate languages, btw)). I have no interest in Python. I had to use PHP recently. I found it... disturbing.

I'm still a bit uneasy about Lisp's dynamic typing system. Programming errors are way easier with that. But I haven't spent enough time with it to determine whether this is that big of a hindrance.

----------------


In any system by which people begin to expect monetary compensation for their work (even when necessitated by basic survival) you will find similarities to free vs proprietary software. Here's something somewhat relevant (he mentions a quote from Star Trek, that part is relevant):


What does that have to do with free software? Well, it's more so to "free as in beer." If we didn't rely on a system of money, and desired to produce through software, there would be no need to be compensated because you could just ask for what you want. You would have food, shelter, and everything you need. If you required more space you could get it. If you desired to listen to music you could just listen to it. Imagine that sort of society, where humans weren't obsessed with pieces of paper that we subjectively apply value to.

That sort of utopia is a ways off if ever to be achieved. But the only way you can achieve something worth achieving is to put effort toward it. That's why you would write and use free software (in both senses of the term).

Now consider proprietary software. Maybe it makes sense to make your software proprietary in the short term then later release the source code to it as Id Software does with all of its games. (You can download the source code to Doom 3 BFG right now, and read an article about how it all works.) That makes sense to do. John Carmack, rocket scientist and genius programmer who helped get PC gaming where it is today, is one of the great advocates for this. Because of what he's done and how open he is about everything he does we all benefit.

Okay, now let's look at a company like Microsoft. They provide no source code to the operating system that millions use, even though employees of Microsoft admit it's slower than Linux. Who is Microsoft helping by not releasing source code upon request? Even here at TGC you can download the source code to the main engine portion of DBP. (The compiler is still proprietary, though.)

It's arrogant to think that the code you write is impossible for someone else to write. That sort of thinking is also wrong. IMO, it's okay to ask for compensation due to need for it. That's the society we live in, and that's one of the prices we pay to live in that society. Here's the thing. When you give out software and someone is legitimately having a problem with the way your software works and they could easily fix the problems themselves, you're slapping them in the face when you say "no" after they already bought the software. Maybe you feel that should be implied with proprietary software. But the matter still remains that they would have bought your software in the hope that they could use it. I'll give a quote directly from Richard Stallman's Wikipedia page:


Here's an issue I'm facing right now, actually. The router I got when I signed up for the only Internet company I can go through -- SureWest -- has been locked down. I have no access to the router even though I paid for it, and for the company's on-going service. I've placed requests to either unlock the router or just give me the username and password for the login into the router. These have been thoroughly denied. A lot of the business I do takes place on the Internet and I have no reliable method of doing things off of the Internet. The only (legal) solutions are: (1) I have (even after attempting brute force entry into the router) is to have them come back out here, set it into "bridge mode" then, with my own money, buy another router so I can actually use the system. (They say their router must be used. I haven't evaluated whether this is technically true or not -- maybe it's using a proprietary method to communicate with their offices. -or- (2) I have to move again to go with another Internet company. It's obvious that the latter is not a viable option.

This sort of practice does not benefit the consumer, which is exactly what producers in society are meant to do. If they were more open, this wouldn't be an issue.


Intuitively I'd say the opposite is true. People who would pirate would pirate anyway. Implementing DRM takes longer (even if it took just a second longer, it still takes longer) and only delays the inevitable: cracked software. I've heard people using cracked software talk about how terrible the software they use is. The crack probably broke something in the software. So instead of just being sane and making software for people who will legitimately acquire it, they treat consumers like an inmates. The funny thing is that you pay to be placed in their prison. This sort of anti-consumer practice is becoming more and more common from what I can tell, and it needs to stop.

There are some cool deals like the Humble Bundle which don't have any DRM, but that's not exactly "mainstream."


Software worth using is written by people who would write the software because they're passionate about what they do. Has Einstein ever charged for any of his mathematical equations? We don't pay to learn about Quantum Mechanics beyond the cost of food, power, shelter, and Internet. You might pay for a book, but then you're paying for the physical material and the shapes the ink makes on the pages, not the information within it.

You also misunderstand what free software means. It doesn't mean "you don't have to pay for it," even though that's common of free software. It means you are free to modify it. You are free to make it actually work the way it should. That is, you can fix bugs, annoying prompts, or whatever else, and share your changes with the world. That also means you can benefit from the hard work that others around the world have put into the software. Consider all of the free software technologies you're going through to communicate here, for example. Even the Windows networking model is based on BSD Sockets.

So, yes, you could be compensated for the software you write. You could make a living from it even. That's possible with nonrestrictive licensing or at the very least providing source upon request, even under a non-disclosure agreement and setting up a sharing system so that people who own the software can swap code with each other.


I personally believe that those who make the effort to make things more convenient should be rewarded. I also believe this creates more apathy in the world, which leads to less action. That's a mixed bag though because education is more important than monetary compensation. In these systems, under capitalist countries, the authors of these books probably make some profit off of each sale. (Depends on the publisher and the medium it's going through, like Amazon, Barns & Noble, etc.) Local governments might buy a bunch of these books for local education. However, consider one of the major topics of interest in at least the United States currently, the lack of jobs. Consider how many people don't have a proper education. Then consider the amount it costs to get a proper education. (A lot.) Then consider that there aren't really that many options out there for being able to achieve that. That is what charging for education does: creates a lack of it. I don't know how any self respecting human could do that, knowing the consequences, and live with it without any form of remorse or pity. It happens though.


I agree with that model more, really. (See the video linked to above.) The thing is, he's explicitly not against charging for software. If software is meant to be there to help people, it should help people.

----------------

I really hope people interpret my words the way I intended them to be. I'm posting this on the Internet though, so probably not. lol

Cheers!

Not a fan of Stallman because I think there's nothing wrong with treating software as a good, to be made and sold. I think a lot of our view of patents is skewed by the negative uses of it, but I believe patents really do give an innovation incentive. H264 might be annoyingly patent encumbered, but it is still the king of encoders.

Private funds like the Free Software Foundation that take donations from the public. I'm not sure if it's actually classed as a charity, but that's basically what it is.


Yes, and terrible atrocities such as eliminating disease are committed this way. If you invent something life-saving or empowering, explain to me why it should not be available to everyone.


Not true. Programmers are often paid to develop gratis software, take abode flash player as an example.


In most countries the rate of tax differs depending on level of income, so everyone would pay a proportional price for software instead of a fixed one. Even if all citizens paid a flat rate, paying for the development of free software is far cheaper than purchasing proprietary software off the shelf, and benefits the poorest the most; so I don't know what your "average citizen" shtick is about. Not everyone would have to pay, those who don't own TV's don't pay for a TV licence, for example.


That simply doesn't make sense. How could the government dictate or censor what is created when the source code is freely available to be modified and redistributed?


*Edited for clarity because the English language is vague.
Proprietary software stifles innovation by limiting access to knowledge (source code), preventing community cooperation to improve programs, and disrupting development by forcing regular checks to ensure the software being developed is not in breach of copyright. I stumbled upon this paper which seems worth a read: http://homepages.cwi.nl/~paulk/patents/isnot.pdf

Now to read those long comments...

[edit]
@Aaron @29 Games
Both your comments were very informative, thanks. I don't think I could add anything that you haven't already said.

The last thing I want is having the government in complete control of software development as it would be if it funded software. I'm laughing at the idea! You're not proposing a situation where ALL software would be government funded are you? That would be terrible for indy studios and hobbyists. How sad it would be.

>implying general software is life-saving or empowering the same way life-saving medicine is
top lel


employees who are payed by adobe, which only has money to pay them with because they sell proprietary products. take that away and where does the flash player developer's paycheck come from then?

the debate on tax-funding is entirely too involved in general tax policy and political philosophy to focus on anymore


>government funded development of free software
>software is developed without government funding
which point are you arguing from again? you said one earlier, now you're taking the other stance. get your own train of thought straight.

>implying basic resources can be unlimited
>implying space itself is unlimited
>implying limits on resources are caused by money
>NSTAAFL


aaaand your product becomes the next XChat. congratulations. that is exactly what i meant when i made the comparison to an overseas company mass-producing your design and forcing you out of your own market.

Neither of you seem to understand what free (as in freedom) software means. No one has complete control over software development if the software is free. You are acting like I'm saying that only the government should be allowed to develop software, which simply doesn't make sense when we are talking about free software. How on earth would free software be detrimental to hobbyists? It would be fantastic for hobbyists, they would be able to learn from real code and modify the programs they use every day.


Okay, that was a poor example, but you make it sound like programming would suddenly become an unvalued skill. Most software development is for in-house bespoke software, those skills are still required whether the software is proprietary or free.


Agreed, but just think about how science works. I don't hear anyone worried about how scientists will get jobs if they aren't allowed to patent their equations.

All arguments against free software seem to be asking for an artificial barrier to knowledge, you're basically saying "we don't want to let just anyone program". You want to restrict freedoms just so that you can make a few more bucks selling your software. If allowing source code to be free would damage the software industry then it is an artificially inflated industry.

I can imagine when home printers became available there was a similar argument from people in the printing industry, "What's going to happen to the printing industry if any old Joe can just print their own work whenever they like at low cost!"


Of course software is empowering! What do you think computers are for?
I'm not trying to equate software with medicine, I'm saying that removing patents from developments that help everyone benefits society. Software is an even better example of this than medicine because, while it's not going to directly save lives, it costs virtually nothing to reproduce. If someone writes a brilliant piece of software then everyone in the world who has a computer can share it for free. That is an advantage of digital software not a problem.


This. Money is useful for trading but we've fallen into the trap of valuing everything in terms of money, we treat it like it's a perfect system for judging the value of everything, where in reality it's merely convenient. "Successful", in our society means, "successful at accumulating money", that's disgusting to me. Valuing everything in terms of money is a form of capitalist extremism, it states that the only value anything has is its commercial value.

Ah, I guess that just wasn't quite clear to me when you first mentioned it, sounds like a fine idea when you put it like that.

Money and intellectual property!!! I'm hard core pro-capitalism, you see.

This is probably the best speech of his I've seen. He gets to the point quickly and describes it very well. Maybe it will clear up some of the things I've been trying to get across.

Do you honestly believe the importance of a product to the world justifies it to be freely available? It all comes down to how it was made, and what the makers decide to do with it.

Explain to me why a product with an investment of millions should be free?

TheComet

Under our current system, there is no explanation. Under a different system the drug recipe would be placed on public record for all the world to access for the knowledge and benefit of mankind, yuck, but you did ask

salk

To benefit mankind.

If everyone had the same attitude as you then you most likely would not even be alive today, and we certainly wouldn't be talking right now over a free internet.


http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110811/10245715476/what-if-tim-berners-lee-had-patented-web.shtml

It's a kind gesture, really, but I just don't see ALL of our world working like that. I'm all for free software, I'm glad there are people willing to invest time for helping mankind, and everything I've personally written so far (PonyCraft included) is open source. But never will anything be 100% free, there will always be a healthy balance, because money has to come from somewhere.



The internet isn't free, I'm paying my monthly fee so I can access it, I'm paying my electrical bill so my computer can run, I'm paying rent to I have a roof over my head so I can sit at my computer screen safely, and I've payed money for the tee-bags I used to make the tee I'm currently sipping. This money has to come from somewhere, so I think it's a good thing if you can make a buck for the software you write.

And besides, we both bought DBC and DBP when they first came out, and don't tell me they were cheap!

TheComet

I mean free as in freedom. Each ISP doesn't have its own version of the internet with exclusive websites.


You wont get much tea in a tee.


Yes, but that's before I knew they were evil.
I don't really understand why DBC isn't totally free by now, in both senses of the word, but I think TGC's policy with DBP is great. You get it for free but if you want to make money from it you have to pay them first. Seems totally fair and smart to me. Gratis software helps to establish a large community, which is great for coders and gamers, and why the F2P model works so well. The people who actually pay need people to play with and talk to, and having that interaction also encourages more people to pay or support the community in other ways. I.E. this forum is very important for TGC to succeed.

So I noticed, sorry. I skimmed the thread and misinterpreted what you meant by that word. And it seems I cannot spell "tea" at 2am either.

TGC charged out of the butt when DBP was first released. Back then, that was nowhere near a fair policy, nor was it "free". I'd go as far as to say their software benefits mankind, but that still didn't justify it being "free". I just don't see how this argument you're making is supposed to work.

DBC was affordable at the time of its release, and it was very successful because they found a niche in the marketplace. As a result of DBCs tremendous success, it allowed them to charge those unholy 350$ for DBP because TGC knew it would work. I bought it.

And I don't blame them. They produced the software, they own all of the rights to the software, they get to choose what to do with it and how.

Obviously it was a wise step to make it available for free (but not "free" free) later down the line, but that's beside the point you're making from what I understand. You're telling me all software which would benefit mankind should be made free and "free" with this statement:



Sorry for being stubborn about this, but I really don't get how this makes sense when you apply this to TGC's situation:



------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



This I agree with completely. However, as explained above, TGC wasn't always like that, and nor will they be like this in the future with new products (I didn't follow anything to do with AppGameKit, so please correct me if I'm wrong. Was AppGameKit free when it was first released?).

TheComet

But now you've put the idea out there I can see it happening.. It would be awesome

@Comet - I see where you are coming from now.
(Is talking about general politics okay? No party or nation-specific stuff.)
The problem lies with the nature of the current capitalist system. The economy is a constantly running treadmill, where the poorer you are the faster you have to run just to stay still. This encourages people to be selfish. Proprietary software is selfish and unethical, I don't judge people for trying to survive in a cruel system, but that doesn't change the fact it is unethical.
Stallman is very unforgiving and says, "If you can't earn an ethical living from software development then find yourself another job."
I think if all software were free it would greatly benefit society but there is a big price to pay (literally talking money here) for that freedom. The real problem is the way the system works, if it could be changed then free software would become more viable.

I'm not going to lie and say that if software developers make their software free they wont lose any profits. Sacrifices have to be made to make changes, for the users these are minor sacrifices of convenience, for the developers there are bigger sacrifices but I think they are worth making. Even small actions help, like releasing the source to an old project like DBC. I don't think Stallman's "All or nothing" attitude is realistic.

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I may not like capitalism in its current form but I don't think pure socialism works either, we need a blend of the two in a way that compliments the advantages of both systems. Capitalism increases productivity but reduces innovation; Socialism increases innovation but reduces productivity.
The flaw in capitalism is that wealth can be indefinitely accumulated, this gives corporations too much power over the economy and they stifle innovation to preserve their own dominance.
I believe I have a possible solution, it would be interesting to hear what you guys think of it. (Although radical ideas don't get much slack around here.) It's not a totally rounded idea yet but I'd like to hear if there are any gaping holes in it.

Money is single-use only. Used money cannot then be given as payment in further transactions, it is withheld by the recipient.
At regular intervals each citizen's money, whether received-used or unspent-unused, is then tabulated and all citizens are ranked by this figure.
Then all money in current circulation is deleted and the total wealth of the nation is redistributed by set ratios based on wealth ranking for the previous period.
This ensures that the distribution of wealth amongst the population remains at a constant ratio. The rich do not get richer; the poor do not get poorer. But crucially there is still an economic hierarchy.
How the ratios are defined allows for flexibility in designing the structure of the economical hierarchy.

Jesus. What's next? Free gas? Free food? I understand some of his points, yet at the same time, software plays a very huge role in the economy. Games are software. Technology runs on embedded software. If you were to make every bit of development free, there would be no future market for technology to advance. What drives people to innovate? Money. If it were all free, people wouldn't want to develop or refine ANYTHING, besides the wealthy, and I don't believe anybody wants to play a game made by, say, Bill Gates (As an example). Consumerism drives much innovation, whether you want to face it or not.

I understand some might want to look at others' codes and learn from them, but that alone doesn't make you brilliant. What makes people brilliant is creating NEW solutions to problems that defeat the old. Not fine-tuning somebody else's scratch work. What kind of developer wants to be known for fixing a bug in, say, Windows, when they could be known for creating the next best thing entirely. Seriously, this whole deal sounds like some cheap-skate who is sick of paying for his antivirus updates. You don't go out and get your home renovated for free do you?

EDIT: And Obese, are you some sort of advocate for this situation? I see you had a petition against HTML5 DRM as well. If you don't want to pay for others' hard work, don't use it. If you had some outstanding piece of commercial software development, yet lost the majority of your profit to people like you, I don't believe you'd feel quite the same as you're making yourself seem. If this were a free society, I'd be all for it, sure. But, the way the world works is the way the world works, and this would be removing s HUGE cog in that system.

People will always reinvent the wheel, FREE or otherwise..

I was going to say something really brilliant but....

xCatalyst said it so well that I'll just refer you to his post above.
It's been really amusing reading this thread.

I'd agree, he stated everything perfectly. Making all software free is a terrible idea. Why can't we just treat it like any other object you can buy for money? Yes, it's not a physical object but when you have a computer to handle it, it might as well be. Allowing everyone to view everyone else's code for the sake of humanity is of flawed logic; sure, in the immediate it might make innovation occur faster, but in the long run, companies will have no more incentive to innovate because their innovations will no longer give them an edge in the market, slowing innovation overall. Money and competition driven innovation like seen in the capitalist market is very powerful. That would be completely gone with the open code system. It's software socialism.

I think this is interesting but I have not properly analyzed this yet. I wonder how this could work in a system like the Forex.


The first thing that comes to mind here is "the insecure kind." The same type of person that feels they must do something great or be left behind. A lot of people will die unhappy because of this. People should do because they want to, not because they have to or because they are driven by fear or insecurity.

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Proprietary operating systems usually "work better" (as perceived by users who aren't aware of the technical inner-workings) because they have access to proprietary documentation about devices. Many drivers for hardware tend to be written only for the most popular system. Considering the average non-tech user (which seems to be the majority of them) uses only what comes with their system (and has no concept of what an "operating system" is) they wouldn't take the time to get a new system. Hence, most popular operating system. It's by no means the best nor the most functional. You can do a lot more with GNU/Linux. Plus, FreeBSD has a lot of cool stuff in it too. (Though I haven't found the time to properly test it.) These systems are more stable on supported hardware than Windows and other proprietary software in my experience.

As for "normal software," I've never used any proprietary software that has performed a job better than a free software alternative that has had the same amount of development time for it.

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Free as in speech/freedom, not as in beer. Richard Stallman sold emacs disks for $150 each and made a suitable living that way. If you're not sure how that works then you're not familiar with the philosophy or the license, so go look that up. There's enough information in this thread.

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My current model of making money from software (which I'm gradually moving out of):

1. Make proprietary component.
2. Release source code under GPL after x profit is made or n years pass.
-- I would also give away free copies to anyone who proves that they've contributed to an "approved" GPL project (with their contributions accepted into the project).

or

1. GPL project.

I'm not saying you have to follow my model or that you need to make free software. I'm explaining my view, not demanding that you follow it. I hope that you would make free software exclusively and if not contribute to it in some way. But freedom means choice.

What do you lose by making your software free (as in speech)? Some short term monetary gain, possibly at the expense of maintaining a project that could be made better by contributions from the development community?

If you actually care about the software you're writing, why would you deny improvements?
If you don't care about the software you're writing, then you shouldn't be writing it.

Again, I understand the need for monetary gain. That's why for the systems I think I can make money on I set up a "temporarily proprietary" system. I'd also rather not do that because I want people to use the software I write and benefit from it. I would hope that's the reason you write your software: so people can benefit from it. (I also write software with the expectation that I would be able to use it for my everyday tasks or for whatever domain it's written for.)

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Edit: I made a grammatical mistake that I fixed. Others are surely in here still though.

[disclaimer: I might come across as being confrontational but I don't mean any offence. This is becoming a good debate and that makes me more energetic than usual, but it is all in good spirit.]


So did slavery. I'm not equating proprietary software with slavery, but profitability has no role in ethics.


That is complete rubbish. People are driven to innovate by their natural curiosity and intelligence, they don't suddenly become geniuses when they hear they could make a pile of money. As I said before, capitalism drives production (not innovation), which can aid the process of innovation if it gets to the right people, but it certainly does not inspire innovation. If money gets to the wrong people they will stifle the innovation of their competitors.

Socialism drives innovation because it allows open collaboration and the sharing of ideas. But pure socialism has the inverse problem of pure capitalism, production falls due to lack of incentives. Under pure socialism, productivity can only be maintained within a group that shares a common goal and philosophy. This is why Communist societies are totalitarian, because they must impose a common philosophy upon an entire nation in order to function.


More utter garbage? "To bake an apple pie from scratch you must first create the universe." Every single human innovation, since some hairy bugger hit two rocks together a million years ago, has been a refinement of currently existing knowledge and technology.


I suggest you watch some of Stallman's speeches if that is your view.


I do pay people for their work, I just don't support software I don't agree with. Maybe I'm reading too much into this but it sounds as if you're implying that I pirate software, I can assure you that I've never copied software without permission.


The nature of society isn't going to spontaneously change, it requires a lot of work and sacrifice. I don't know if I'm intelligent or brave enough to actually make any kind of significant difference, but I feel like I have to at least try. The free software movement has me excited because it is a route through which I might be able to help foster change.

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If you have any doubts about what I've said then watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NbBjNiw4tk#t=10m8s
The whole video is good but only from 10:08 is relevant to this discussion.

I understand that, but that is simply not how anything is, or will be, playing out. Look at the iPhone. It has an entire software industry within it! As does Android smartphones. They are a target for people to choose a career with. If you are taking careers out of the economy, you are hurting the economy; No matter how you look at it.



Yes, but slavery applies to the workers of said system. Not what the workers produce. This is a different age, where you do actually have to earn a sufficient income to survive. If you aren't earning income with your software that you produce, you sure aren't going to be making software.

Imagine being younger, and thinking of your future careers. Ideally, you want something that you'll a.) be happy doing, and b.) will allow you to live your life how you want to. I can tell you, any sane person would be skipping right over programming if all software were free. It would be like somebody deciding to go (if it were possible) produce grass, or trees, or some other free substance. It already takes a certain kind of person to perform the task, why would you want to further deplete the amount of programmers in the world? By the way, these people are the ones that will be doing the innovations, mind you.



Yes, but what I'm telling you, is there would be no common goal or philosophy. What kind of goal is: "Heeey, let's go spend the next four years of our lives to go out and produce this awesome, most fantastic, piece of software which won't even allow me to support my one child, and will also make my wife leave me because I simply don't have time for her!"

No. Just, no.

I don't want people donating to me for profit, and I sure as hell don't want the government supporting my life; And you shouldn't either!

I agree, but Socio-Capitalism doesn't support unethical industries. Banning child labour hurt the economy too.


Software straddles this line as it is both a product and a tool of industry. Proprietary software imposes restrictions on its users, limiting their freedoms.


But there is already an established philosophy: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/


I don't understand why people are so distrusting of the government and unwilling to collaborate with it, yet at the same time unwilling to rally against it. I understand your concerns about the government gaining too much control and abusing its power, but that's exactly why I support free software, so that people are liberated and not subject to the whims of corporations.

I'm not sure that's a fair statement. Are you saying that developers have no freedoms. Your supposed freedoms of the users seem to be imposing on the freedom of the developers to make what they want, distribute it the way they want, and charge what they want. Or do they just not have that freedom?

That's kind of like saying a gay couple kissing in public is infringing on the freedoms of homophobes.